As the first week of school came, students that attended classes in John S. Kyser Hall grew confused about which elevators were working in the building.

Currently, Northwestern State University of Louisiana Kyser Hall’s east elevator is completely in operation while the west elevator is still undergoing replacements.

Katie Rion, freshman English major, shared her recent experience with navigating Kyser Hall and the elevators.

“The elevators being broken is really annoying if you’re in a rush, especially if you just came in from being outside in the recent heat and now have to run up four flights of stairs,” Rion said. “All of my classes are on the third and fourth floor, and on days whenever I’ve already walked from my dorm and then back to class, having to go up the stairs is not fun.”

Tinley Durr, sophomore general studies major, said the elevator issues are nothing new to her.

“Going from floor one to the fourth floor at least three times a day, I definitely think the elevators need more work and to be more reliable,” Durr said.

Plans have been put in place for both of the Kyser elevators to be replaced within the next couple of months of the Fall 2023 semester.

Mark Melder, Kyser Hall building manager, explained that the west elevator will be fully operational by the end of the fall semester, if everything goes as planned.

“We are hoping to start in two weeks,” Melder said. “Since they’ve done the east elevator now and it’s the same repair crew coming to fix the west elevator, they’ve seen the various modifications that have occurred over the last 60 years.”

Dale Wohletz, physical plant director, said that replacing the elevators is a long process that relies on finding the available funds and waiting for specific parts.

“We started this process a year ago, getting the initial paperwork ready and choosing a designer to come in, and figure out what we needed to upgrade the elevator,” Wohletz said.

In addition to the west side Kyser hall replacement, NSU is in the process of upgrading the three elevators in Watson Memorial Library of NSU’s Natchitoches campus, and one elevator that is currently down in building B of the Shreveport campus, Wohletz said.

“Both the east and west elevators in Kyser Hall were modified to have upgraded mechanics such as new rollers, cables, electronics and upgraded all the safety devices,” Wohletz said. “We are hoping to get started pretty quickly on the process of getting the elevators upgraded.”